Appeal Court Orders Resentencing : Pizza Thief’s 7-Year Term Put on Hold

A state appellate court Tuesday set aside a San Diego man’s seven-year prison sentence for robbing a deliveryman of two pizzas.

The thief, Lennie Eugene Morris, 24, said he stole the pizzas in July, 1983, after he and his pregnant girlfriend had gone for two days without any food but corn flakes and Kool-Aid.

A three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal ordered Judge Kenneth Johns of the San Diego County Superior Court to reconsider the stiff sentence. In February, 1984, Johns imposed a two-year sentence for the pizza heist and added a five-year enhancement, citing Morris’ conviction in 1980 for a residential burglary.

The appeal court said Johns failed to exercise his discretion by adding the five-year term to Morris’ sentence.

“He (Morris) asked for salami and cheese and got the works!” Judge Edward Butler wrote in the eight-page opinion.

The justices did not consider whether the seven-year sentence was cruel and unusual punishment for the offense, but said they could review that issue if the case is returned to them after Morris is resentenced by Johns.

Morris is serving the seven-year sentence at the California Institution for Men in San Luis Obispo.

At the initial sentencing hearing, Morris’ attorney, Francis Bennett of San Diego, asked Johns not to add the five-year enhancement to Morris’ sentence. But the judge refused, noting that the extra prison time was designed to send a message to repeat offenders.

“If it’s to do any good, then it has to be enforced,” Johns said, according to a transcript of the 1984 proceedings.

Court records say Morris, a native of Carbondale, Ill., had two other previous convictions, including a theft involving some doughnuts. He was unemployed and on probation for two of the earlier offenses when he was arrested in the pizza case.

Morris called Little Joe’s Pizza Restaurant late on July 19, 1983, and ordered two pizzas delivered to the Southeast San Diego apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Denise Lopez.

When deliveryman Richard Bullock arrived, Morris, who was sitting outside, approached him from behind and placed a pipe covered with tape against Bullock’s back, according to the appellate court decision.

Morris told Bullock to hand over the pizzas. Bullock complied, believing the blunt object in his back was a gun. Then Bullock ran away to call police, leaving behind two orders of lasagna and two salads in his car, the court record says.

Police quickly arrived at Morris’ apartment, where they found Morris hiding in a kitchen cabinet and the two uneaten pizzas in the oven.

“I was so afraid if Denise went any longer without nothing in her stomach that it would kill the baby,” Morris later told his probation officer, according to court records. Morris’ girlfriend eventually gave birth to a healthy girl, who is now 2.

Morris also said he was embarrassed to ask his parents for money, though he thought they would have helped him.

“He wanted to be so independent,” his mother, Beverly Gardner of San Diego, said Tuesday.

San Diego County probation officials had trouble deciding what sentence to recommend to Johns, court records show.

Bullock urged deputy probation officer Jon Krotzinger to recommend the heaviest possible punishment--five years in prison plus the five-year enhancement. In a report to the court, Krotzinger said Bullock was so traumatized by the attack that he quit his job.

Nonetheless, Krotzinger initially recommended--and Johns agreed --that Morris be sent to prison for further evaluation. After the diagnostic period, the probation office recommended that Morris receive only two years, with the enhancement set aside.

But at the sentencing, Johns said the public wants stern penalties imposed on violent criminals who terrify their victims.

“I think the people of this state have told us they’re pretty tired of that,” Johns said, according to a transcript of the hearing. “In fact, they don’t want it to happen, and they feel that people who do it should go to state prison.”

In addition to the seven-year sentence, Johns ordered Morris to pay $40 in restitution to Little Joe’s.